Bush Mackel

I don’t remember exactly when, but sometime recently I said that one of things I wanted to do was get myself from point A to point B with my online endeavors.

Obviously, most of us want to do the same in that we all start with projects at point A, and we want them to succeed (get them to point B).

Up until now I’ve been talking a good game on here, but I think it’s high time to take things to the next level.

“What in the Devil Are You Talking About?”
Like most of us out there, I have my hands in a couple different pots. And also like most of us, I’m not doing enough to get myself and these projects to where I want them and need them to be so that I can declare them successful. So what I’m proposing here and now is a magical mystery tour of sorts… You, me and my projects. From point A to point B.

I want to share with you everything that I’m thinking with all of them, set some concrete goals, and work hard as sin to get my sites/projects to “that point” as quickly and intelligently as I can.

Coming Up
In the next couple of days, I’m hoping to share with you all the projects that I have and furthermore discuss them all in detail in terms of :

• What they are : Currently and My Original Vision
• Where they are now : Stats/Income
• Where I want them to be : Income
• How I see them getting there : Plans

And of course since I’m hoping you’ll all come along for the ride, I hope you will also take this whole thing as an opportunity to discuss in detail all the things that go into these kinds of online businesses… Web development, marketing, seo, link building, affiliate marketing, and anything else that comes up. I’ve never claimed that I was an expert on any of this, but hopefully at the “end” we’ll all be much more knowledgeable in these kinds of things.

So will you join me?

Hey everyone! I really appreciate all the feedback I received yesterday on my How Am I Doing post!

It’s really interesting for me to hear from all of you what brings you to my site and obviously what brings you back.

So thanks again! It’s always nice to receive such lofty compliments, and I’m going to continue to do what I do in order to bring a bigger and better site to your doorstep.

What Does All This Mean?
As far as content, I hope it means that I’ll start delivering some really good posts and series again that will help us all out in our web and blogging endeavors. As far as everything else, I really think I need to get more proactive with this site…

Gettin’ it Done
As it relates to blogging, I always keep the following notion in the back of my mind, “What’s the point of writing super content for your site, if there’s no one around to read it?” Now relative to when I first started this thing, I’ve come along way. But if I’m going to get the “next level”, I really need to push the envelope.

And I’m not talking about any black hat seo, but I’m talking about

• increasing readership
• increasing revenue
• increasing traffic

Now a lot of things go into upping the preceding and I’m not going to go into that now, but in the next month or so I really want to start doing the things that I need to to elevate this site to the position it ought to be. And if you hadn’t already figured out, I want to take you along for the ride!

Other Projects
Recently, I’ve been doing a ton of thought into my Learn Stuff Online site. It’s a project I started a while back but never quite got my footing with. But I think through things I’ve learned here with my blog, I’m ready to dive back into it and finally knock it out of the park.

Stay Tuned!
I think up ’till now with my site we’ve all said “this is how you do this, and this is how you do that”, but now it’s time to put my money where I mouth is and really step up to the bat. I’m going to post a lot of details on this site about those projects and hopefully in the process get them to where they need to be plus share with you all how we go about doing it.

Sound good? As we go forward, I hope you’ll all chime in with any questions about things going forward. We’re all on different pages which means we can all give and take a lot from each other. Are you as excited as I am?

You know that a little while ago I said I was I was going to be trying to increase my AdSense earnings. I wish I could say that I had been trying to do so for a while, but in all honesty it was more like “I was thinking about trying” but that just wasn’t the case. Thankfully, I was smart enough to ask an Adsense Guru, (Everton over at Connected Internet), why he was so successful with AdSense and he gave me more than a complete answer.

What A Response
Not only did he respond to my private message, he also wrote the previously linked post (a true gem), and then went a step further as to come to my site and completely break down my obvious shortcomings! Here are highlights from his suggestions and how I’m trying to address them:

• Traffic From Search Engines - This is probably the biggest one I’m currently focusing on. As Everton so casually says, “Search engine visitors are more likely to click on contextual ads than bloggers who probably don’t even see ads.” Up ’till now, my search engine visitors have been really low. Why? One reason is probably that my keywords and description meta tags weren’t being used. Case in point, check out my site in the big G: This isn’t good! Worse is when every page on your site currently indexed has the same summary pop up.
  RECTIFICATION - I downloaded the All In One SEO Pack plugin for Wordpress which allows me to specify a title, description and keywords for all my posts. Over the next week, I went back and added a unique title, description and keywords to every post.
• Add Section Targeting - I had never heard about this before Everton told me. Basically, by adding two comments, you can tell AdSense which text to look at it when pulling up ads. This is CRUCIAL because you certainly want your ads to match the text you’re writing about right?
  RECTIFICATION - Added section targeting per the big G’s specifications.
• Lose the Sidebar Ad - I was told to do this because it’s probably not netting me many clicks but almost definietely lowering my overall CTR which reduces how much I’m paid on my AdSense ads because of Google’s smart pricing.
  RECTIFICATION - This may not be the ONLY place where I’m hurting myself. But of course, everything’s tagged and while it looks like (even this early) that Everton is right, I’m going to wait just a a while longer ’till I have some more data on all my ads so I can pull off/change all the ones that aren’t performing.
• My Theme - This one hurt to read. Black text on a white background is easier to read and blue links are saying “click me” to all those search visitors I’m going after. Of course, my site is the complete opposite of that AND worse since I don’t even know which color people are seeing when looking at my site. AY YI YI. Add on top of that that I’ve been advised to lose my left sidebar and you can see my face just getting ALL befuddled.
  RECTIFICATION - Wish I knew. The problem is I REALLY like my theme. It’s dynamic and I love the colors. So I think for now I’m going to leave things where they are but maybe when I have some time this month I’ll look into taking out a sidebar and fooling with some of the colors. Who knows, maybe I could change the look of the site to an inverse of what it is now and rock that out. Hey! It doesn’t look half bad!!!

There are plenty of more tips that Everton was so kind to give, but I just wanted to hit the ones that I think I NEED to focus on now. But that might be different for you so make sure you check out the post on his site, and his comments on mine!

Many of you have read my little blurbs about this “new site” that I’ve been working on. If you’ve logged onto my MyBlogLog profile lately, you probably will have seen it before this “official” announcement but anyway here it goes… *drumroll* My new site is :

Da Mack Daddy.com!

Basically, after the new baby came, friends and family have been asking me a lot of questions, want to see pictures, and frankly - I’d love to talk to respond to all of that! And so, I made a new blog! It took me a while to settle on a name for the domain and then to get everything installed (last thing to install was of course Gallery *rolling eyes*) but now it’s finally up and ready to go! Another big reason that I wanted to start the new site is because having the kid is such a big thing, but unfortunately doesn’t really go with all the tech stuff on here (at least not yet). So until that day comes, check out the new site if you want to get an update on the kid and see some pics too (once I add the Gallery link that is). Once I’ve gotten into a groove with this site and that, I wouldn’t be surprised if I started a third blog!

A lot has been going on with me and the site(s) lately, and I feel like over the last week or so I haven’t really had that web presence/connection with a lot of you. Most if not all of that was from me pulling double duty on here and my new site, so I wanted to take the time to pause and get my feet firmly planted on the web again. The first part of this is letting all of you know what’s “real good on the streets”, and the second part is resuming my normal behavior of visiting all my friends on the web on a regular basis. (It feels like I haven’t updated my sage feeds since last Thursday!)

So first up to bat is a little recap on this site. June was a great month for me because I feel like I really got a good grip on here…From my RSS feeds, themes, and other customizations - I just feel very comfortable with how things are working now which is a bit of a contrast with not too long ago when I was just getting my feet wet in the blogosphere. On a different side of things, I’ve also started paying attention to my Alexa rank and I enjoy watching it get lower and lower the harder I work.

I used to not really pay it that much attention until I signed up for Sponsored Reviews (thanks Opal!) and Pay Per Post as Alexa is a factor in how much money you can pull in for reviews. And that is also something I hope to work a bit and discuss on here this month - sponsored posts. As you know, I’ve signed up for both and you should expect to see my first sponsored post sometime this week and I’d like to tell you guys not only how it’s going, but how both of these popular services work from a publisher point of view. But don’t worry, this site isn’t going to become a sponsored post landfill! - I’m really going to make a spirited effort to continue to serve up quality posts and information! - So if you guys think I’m slipping, let me know!

And on a final note in regards to the site, I can’t wait to meet new people this month and continue to learn all about the friends I’ve already met! I’ve said it before but it bears mention again, I’m definitely a people person. I love meeting new people and the conversations I’ve had with you all through comments or e-mail have just been FANtastic! I can’t wait to continue this into a new month…And I hope you can’t either!

P.S. Even though my wife never gets on here to see what’s going on (so she probably won’t read this), she has put up with me on the computer a lot lately - Getting the new theme up to snuff and working on the new site has taken a lot of hours and virtually the whole weekend. This would be something to applaud in normal circumstances, but she hasn’t said a single word about it and with a month old new little guy, I gotta say she’s a special kind of person.

P.P.S. Check back later as I’m finally introducing my new site!

So as some of you know, I just started a new blog. It’s not quite ready yet because I still have to get all the plugins working, layout to where I want it to and get all the other small things up and running like my Google Sitemap, Technorati, pingbacks, and my Feeburner feed. Argh. A LOT to do!

Before all this though, I had to of course install Wordpress on the new domain. I remember the first time I did it how much of a pain in the neck it was. I had to update my mySQL version, permissions, and a whole bunch of other crap. This time, it was PAINLESS. It took me 5 minutes (maybe 6) to upload all the wordpress files, another minute to setup the database, and another minute to go through install.php. And before I knew it, I was presented with a message saying, “[All done! Thought there would be more steps? Sorry to disappoint!]“. Couldn’t be happier! The hardest part of yesterday was definitely deciding on a theme, but I had done some preliminary research on that front too so that was easier than I thought it would be too!

Like the title? Of course it’s inspired by Reel Big Fish’s huge hit, “Sell Out“. So last Friday I signed up at Pay Per Post and it has really given me a cause for a pause. I thought about it a lot before I signed up, and I’m still thinking about it now after I have. Here’s the problem: I take pride in my site and the content I serve up. Furthermore, I feel a certain responsibility to my readers and newfound friends on here, and I kind of feel that by using Pay Per Post for some quick bucks is a slap in their faces and will turn people off from coming here. Let me explain… Continue reading “Sellout With Me Oh Yeah”

I’m not sure if I have said it in as many words to you (all of my party people), but I work pretty diligently online in order to form a more perfect union (for myself) so that I don’t have to work in my cubicle anymore. I’ve made great strides on this front, (in the very least from a knowledge point of view to a greater extent in a financial point of view [actually getting paid for some web design work]). So it’s just a shock to me when I speak to my friends and family about leaving my job behind with better living through the Internet and they just stare blankly back at me as if I said I was going to sell crack for a living. Continue reading “Why Do People Gotta Be Hatin’ on Me and Entrepreneurship”

Amidst my travels on the net yesterday, I kept ending up in affiliate marketing conversations. Now by that, I don’t mean that I participated in them, but I just seemed to be a magnet for them yesterday. It all started with Shoemoney’s post a day or so ago where he included a podcast from his show. You can check that out HERE. To sum it up, he had Tom Fuller on and they discussed various topics including landing pages and of course affiliate marketing. And I’m always up for trying something new, so I ended up at the Digital Point Forums and started doing some research.

This whole thing might be my new obsession.

The good thing is I have recently come into a bit of money that I can play around with.

The bad thing is I have recently come into a bit of money that I can play around with.

While I’ve did a good bit of reading and research yesterday, I know enough to know that I don’t know a lot about this game. But I’m eager to learn and eager to test. So I’ve set up a new campaign or two with adwords, gotten setup with azoogle, and I think I’m ready to go. So yes, there’s yet another n00b in the world of affiliate marketing. If anyone out there has some tips for a guy who knows….Well, who knows nothing, I’ll about hearing them. I’ll let you know how this whole torrid affair ends up.

Yesterday, while I was still glowing about my awesome day this week, I came to a startling conclusion. If you didn’t know, this blog has “been in existence” from May 1st. And since then, I have gotten this site from approximately 14 pageviews a day to something around 78 (over the past 3 days). And I can only assume that the increase in numbers is due largely to the increase in readers to my feed. (Why I monitor and run through FeedBurner). To put it in context, I have been working on LSO for a long long time (seriously for about a year) trying to get links back to the site, creating quality content, worrying about keywords, all the rest, and currently I’m lucky if I break 5 page views a day.

As I’ve said before, when I started this whole process, I really didn’t know where to start but thankfully I found this page, 21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch. #3 on that list is RSS & Subscriptions. I’m so thankful that my alleged ADD didn’t kick in and I actually read that tip. (Probably because it’s only #3 on the list and didn’t have time to get bored). But yeah, putting the RSS icon right at the top helped out a lot when I dugg one of my better posts (in my opinion) and got some ppl to the site. And let me tell you, it’s not like that digg got me a ton of new ppl either, but it was enough, and some of those chose to subscribe.

And now, when I post something new, they get it on their feed reader and come back to check it out! (If it interests them of course). Honestly, I want to do more with my RSS as in bring more attention to it. I mean, I’m a pretty dialed in guy when it comes to the net, but the whole RSS and subscription thing is still pretty new to me just because I never thought that I or anyone else would want to subscribe to a page. But I mean, if it’s a place you like, why shouldn’t you? And that’s what I’m beginning to understand. With really good RSS readers out there and all kinds of widgets and gadgets out there for Vista and Mac OS whatever…It’s a no brainer. And I think one of things I’m gonna do next is again, bring more attention to the RSS icon, the e-mail subscribe, and also maybe a small blurb about WHY someone would want to subscribe.

So if you’re a new blogger and trying to get your stats up, you should make sure you have your RSS on lockdown. And even if you’re not a blogger but are looking for a good way to promote your site, don’t sleep on RSS feeds. I’m thinking about adding one to my other site to get some new visitors, and keep old ones coming back!